


No Place Like Home

by stele3



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asexual Bucky Barnes, Asexual Steve Rogers, Canon Disabled Character, De-Serumed Steve Rogers, Gen, Minor Wanda Maximoff/Vision, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13415748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: Written for "Fandom Loves Puerto Rico"--many thanks again to hansbekhart for putting on that fundraiser.I was won by quietnighty, who requested Steve getting de-serumed and Bucky responding with "HEY YOU LITTLE MOTHERFUCKER I MISSED YOU BEING THIS SIZE, LET ME TAKE YOU DOWN TO THE GYM AND THROW YOU INTO SOME WALLS."





	No Place Like Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/gifts).



The last thing anyone expects Barnes to do when he sees what’s happened to Steve is laugh.

Naturally, that’s what he does.

“Holy shit,” he says, boggling at Steve on the exam table. “You look like you’re eighteen.”

“’Course I look like I’m eighteen. This’ how I _looked_ when I was eighteen.”

“Naw, you were skinnier, and had a lot more fuckin’ bruises.” Barnes eyes Steve up and down in an uncomfortably avid way. Tony, who is hovering off to the side and relishing the opportunity not to feel like the shortest person in the room, watches their interaction with some curiosity. Wanda and Vision are still in the room, too, ostensibly to discern any aftereffects of the magical beam that hit Steve; they’re mostly touching hands in silent, significant ways and take no notice of the weirdness happening on _this_ side of the room.

Tony isn’t sure when he started feeling like the _normal_ one of the super-group. He’s not sure he likes it, but the next best candidate is Steve, and Steve is a regular joe with a vigilante streak—which, at this point that’s pretty normal for New York—until you get him around _Barnes_ , and then there’s a lot of weird staring. It’s not even eyefucking—eyefucking Tony would under _stand_ , they are both ostensibly attractive men, there is plenty of room for romantic entanglement in the last, oh, seventy years of their lives. But this staring is way more soulful and thus about fifty billion times more uncomfortable to witness. Tony’s had plenty of therapy, he is in touch with his emotions, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be up-close-and-personal with the kind of Intense Emotional Eye Contact that Steve and Barnes engage in on a daily basis.

“You’re okay, though?” Barnes asks, his grin going down a couple notches. “Thor said you got hit with a helluva magic…thing. Is this all it did?”

Steve squints at him, his head tilted to one side. He’s bird-boned—seriously, if he was skinnier than _this_ at age eighteen then what the _fuck_ —and it’s both hilarious and deeply upsetting to see that face, nose and all, on top of such a delicate frame. At the moment he’s wearing Tony’s clothes, which hang off him, and his feet don’t even touch the floor. “Is this all? Bucky, it undid the serum. It rewrote my whole _body_ , what else do you think shoulda been on the menu, wings? A couple extra legs?”

“Hey.” Barnes steps closer. Oh boy, here comes the weird eye contact; every time, Tony thinks it can’t be as uncomfortable to witness as he remembers and each time he is proven wrong. “It’s gonna be okay. Long as you’re not dyin’ or something, right? We’ll figure somethin’ out…”

And okay, time to find a broken mechanical thing that needs to be fixed, far from this side of the room—or on the other side, too, where Vision and Wanda have graduated to meaningful face touching. Yikes, it’s a minefield in here.

-o-

It only hurt for a second: magic has its own magnetic field and force, according to Wanda, and the sensation of the beam striking him was like hitting the surface of water after a long fall. A stinging smack that traveled _through him_. The weapon was designed for and intended to disable Thor by destroying his connection to Mjolnir, but instead it whisked the serum from every cell in Steve’s body.

Makes Steve wonder how much of Erskine’s serum was science, and how much was magic?

When he wakes up the next day he forgets, for a second, until he swings his feet out of bed and stands. His head swims instantly and he sits back down, hard. The room is a blur and he gropes blindly for the eyeglasses on the bedside table.

He only gets about fifteen minutes to feel helplessly angry about that before he walks into the kitchenette and finds Bucky steadily working his way through a quiche. There’s a veritable flotilla of breakfast food spread out over the counter around Bucky’s elbows: eggs and bacon and hash and some kind of green smoothies.

“You expectin’ company?” he asks Buck. Even his voice sounds funny, though that might just be his bum ear.

With a large bite stuffed into one cheek, Bucky waves at the food. “Heart-healthy, good for anemia ‘n whatever. Stark sent it up. Does that guy ever talk to people that aren’t machines?”

Steve shrugs, climbing up onto one of the barstools across from Bucky. “Back when he drank, he’d get pretty chatty. Don’t think he knows what to do if he’s not toasted and you’re not trying to get something from him.”

That gets Bucky to stop ploughing through the quiche; he scrunches up his nose in a way that Steve _knows_. Buck wants to make a comment about Howard Stark’s parenting abilities, but remembered just in time that a) he killed Howard Stark and b) Tony’s computer is probably programmed to record any and all instances of Bucky talking about Howard Stark.

Just because Tony’s extended his hospitality to them doesn’t mean that he trusts them. Steve gets the impression that no one but Ms. Potts and Colonel Rhodes have dug past the thick network of glib rejoinders that Tony uses to keep everyone else at arm’s length.

On the other hand: the food smells good.

He’s halfway through a plate of eggs—or iron-rich, heart-healthy egg substitute—when something cold slips into his ear. He flinches, almost choking on his food, and Clint says, “Hold still, Cap, I’ve almost got— _there_!”

Dropping his plate, Steve shoves him away. Clint hops backward, his hands raised and a wry grin on his face. “Where did you even _come from_?” Steve demands then stops and puts a hand to his ear. His voice sounds…

His fingers brush cool plastic and metal: some kind of device like a mic is attached to his ear. “World’s best BTE aid, straight from Wakanda,” Clint says, turning his head to show of the purple ones that curve behind both of his ears. “Don’t tell Stark but they’re totally better. They’re Bluetooth-capable, you can synch them up to your TV or your phone or whatever.”

The aids feel a little funny, like he’s wearing an earring. Steve pokes at it for a few seconds then points at Clint. “You listen to _Dog Cops_ in the briefings. I knew I heard it.”

“Denied,” Clint says, then melts back into the vents or the walls or wherever the fuck he goes.

“God, that guy is weird,” Bucky mutters, as if _he_ has any room to talk.

Turning back to his meal, Steve says, “I’m guessing Wanda and Vision haven’t had any luck figuring out how to reverse the effects?”

Bucky shrugs. He’s actually _drinking_ the green smoothie thing. “Nothing so far. They’re still working on it. Thor thinks it might be Asgardian in origin, he’s going to go ask his brother.”

Loki lives on a small island in the mid-Atlantic, not far from the larger island where the rest of the Asgardians have settled. For some reason this makes Tony mutter a lot about someone named James Bond.

Experimentally Steve says, “Friday?”

“Yes sir?” a voice says in his ear.

“Can you set me up to get alerts about any unusual planetary disturbances?”

“Oh Christ,” Bucky mutters.

“Language.”

“Oh fucknugget.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry sir,” Friday says. “But you may want to narrow your parameters a little.”

By the time Steve is done getting Amber Alert, the USGS, NOAA, FEMA, and several non-American variations thereof—not to mention a few backchannels to CIA and UN red flag protocols that Friday very kindly slips his way—programmed into his new hearing aid, Bucky has moved to the couch. He lies across it, his boots dangling over the side. After Steve has sat for more than thirty seconds in silence, trying to think of anyone else he should watch out for, Bucky sits up and peers over the back of the cushions. “You done yet? Are you wired into every baby monitor in the country?”

He’s a lot more… _talkative_ than normal. What Bucky’s new normal is, post-HYDRA. Steve doesn’t mind: having Bucky here at all is the kind of miracle that makes Steve self-conscious about every wasted moment of his life. As far as he’s concerned he could spend the rest of eternity pulling kittens out of trees and babies from burning hospitals, and he’d still not deserve the breath that goes in and out of Bucky’s lungs; he’s not about to complain if Bucky is quieter than he remembers from their childhood, if his eyes are shadowed and the lines of his face a lot deeper than they should be.

If there’s anyone in the world who deserves happiness, it’s Bucky Barnes, and Steve is fully committed to ensuring that happiness comes his way, when Steve isn’t paying off the debt of Bucky’s life.

But this, Bucky propping his chin on the back of the couch and shooting Steve a sardonic grin—this is different. Not _bad_ , not by itself. After everything that HYDRA did to his brain, Bucky sometimes has shifts in personality. Mostly they’re fine, just harmless, inexplicable moods that comes and go; but other times Bucky will return to himself white and shaken, having just spent two days as a passenger in his own body.

It’s hard to tell the difference from the outside. Steve never wants to give the impression that he _prefers_ Bucky a certain way, any way, so he tries to treat Bucky in any version of himself exactly the same as he always does. He would never, ever mention that right now, with his lips quirked up and his eyes shining, Bucky looks like he stepped out of 1938 to drape himself over their couch.

Instead Steve shrugs and says, “At least I can be an early warning system, especially if we’re bringing Loki into the mix. Not gonna be much use to the team like this.”

Bucky’s eyes narrow and he considers Steve for a long moment before hefting himself up over the back of the couch in a single fluid motion. “You done eating? Thought we’d hit the gym, I owe you a round in the ring.”

“Are…are you kiddin’?”

“Unless you wanna stay here and stuff your face.” Even as he speaks, Bucky plucks up a Danish and fits half of it into his mouth in one go.

Pulling a face, Steve climbs to his feet. It’s not as much of a challenge as it was this morning; maybe there’s something to Stark’s nutritional regimen after all. Steve still isn’t touching that green stuff. “Friday, can you send someone up to box the food up for later?”

“I got it,” Bucky says, waving one hand at Steve. “Go get dressed.”

Padding back into his bedroom, Steve pulls his sleep shirt off over his head and only belatedly remembers the hearing aid; but it survives the experience without so much as budging. Crossing to the mirror on the back of his closet door, he turns his head to examine the earpiece. It’s sleek and dark, as most technology from Wakanda tends to be, and fits almost perfectly along the upper edge of his auricle. When he faces forward again, it’s virtually invisible except for the small wire that dips into his ear canal.

Stepping back, he drops first the shirt in his hands and then shuffles out of his sleep pants as well. In the mirror he examines his boxer-clad self. He is not, as Bucky claimed, quite his eighteen-year-old self: there’s a lot more ropey muscle on his frame and Steve would guesstimate that he’s a good two inches taller, as well.

He’s still scrawny as hell and there’s been a hitch in his breathing since he woke up that spells an asthma attack at some point later in the day. The glasses Stark whipped up for him have large lenses and black clunky frames: they look exactly like the kind of glasses a punk at school would’ve had broken a dozen times, but apparently they’re back in fashion today, because Steve sees them everywhere.

Slipping off the glasses, Steve lets the world go unfocused. In the mirror he is a skeletal white smudge, featureless and surrounded by grey.

“Sir,” Friday says in his ear, making him jump and fumble his glasses back on. “Pardon me, but Master Stark has sent up a pair of contact lenses which you may find more comfortable to wear during physical activity. They will be delivered to the front door in approximately four minutes and thirty-eight seconds.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess.” In Steve’s day, contacts had been fragile luxuries inclined to give their wearer an eye infection. The first time Natasha had paused during a sparring session to mutter about losing a contact, Steve had almost had a heart attack and spent five minutes crawling around the floor before she could convince him that ‘no, really, it was just a few bucks to replace, you can stop apologizing, Steve.’

Of course, then Steve had also needed to remember that ‘a few bucks’ wasn’t much money anymore.

Pulling workout clothes out of the drawers, Steve starts to dress—then stops and, teeth gritted, tosses aside the shirt that went to his knees and the sweats that would never have stayed on his hips. A paper bag with a store logo sits near his bedroom door, out of which his sleeping clothes had emerged; rifling through it, Steve finds a t-shirt and a pair of shorts that are probably meant to be boxers but will work okay for the gym.

The doorbell to their suite rings and Steve hurries out, calling to Bucky that it’s okay. Sudden noises still tend to spook Bucky; sure enough, he’s flattened against the edge of the kitchen doorway, hand hovering near his hip. The ease with which he’s carried himself for the last two days has evaporated.

Fortunately, Tony seems to have grasped their situation, because the courier is a young woman, slight in stature and utterly flummoxed by Steve. She blushes and stammers and fumbles her way through showing Steve how to put contact lenses into his eyes.

Sometimes Steve wonders how Tony manages to exist: both as a man on a mountain and a man who clearly, painfully, understands everyone around him.

Either way, by the time the nice young lady gets through her instructions, Bucky has crossed the bridge of his anxiety enough to give her a smile—which doesn’t help the stammering—and poke fun at Steve while he blindly attempts to fit the impossibly tiny piece of film over his eyeball.

Eventually he succeeds. He’s still blinking, getting used to the sensation against the insides of his eyelids, when Bucky whisks him downstairs to the gym. They have a regular sparring session every other day, when there isn’t a mission: it’s a tradition that has lasted from their boyhood, when they’d go down the street to Roy’s Gym and borrow some gloves. At the time, their main tutors were street bullies and whatever old boxers hung out at Roy’s; later, during the war, Bucky had been the one to teach Steve how to use his new body, sparring with him whenever they had downtime.

It feels like second nature to put out his hands and let Bucky tape them. It’s their pre-fight ritual: Bucky winds the tape carefully around Steve’s wrists and between his knuckles, across his palms; then Steve does the same for Bucky’s one flesh hand.

They step out onto the mats. Steve rolls his shoulders, pulling a face at his own bony knuckles—and then there’s a fist heading at his face and he knocks it to the side purely on instinct. The block isn’t as effective as it normally is and Bucky’s knuckles graze his jaw, making him stumble backward.

“The hell?” he squawks.

Bucky’s already moving in closer, fists up. He’s leading with his flesh hand, but his stance is squared up to fight. “C’mon, what’re you, gonna stand around all day?”

He jabs again and it’s all Steve can do to dodge the blow, stepping sideways and twisting. This time he can tell that Bucky isn’t pulling his punches by much. Steve moves away, cautious to stay out of striking distance, and Bucky pursues. They dance across the floor, Steve stumbling occasionally as one of his feet lands funny or his center of gravity throws him off; each time he expects Bucky to hesitate but he doesn’t. He keeps coming until he catches Steve in a jujitsu move, throwing him to the ground.

Once he’s blinked stars from his eyes, Steve glares up at him. “What the fuck was that s’posed to prove?”

“Language,” Bucky taunts, and pulls him up by the front of his shirt.

He doesn’t let up, either, keeps coming. The blows he lands are light, pulled up short at the last minute, but they still batter Steve’s ribs and forearms. There’s a point to this—Steve knows him. Knows the way he thinks. He’s trying to get Steve to realize something but Steve can’t _think_ with Bucky coming at him—

He’s opening his mouth to call a break when Bucky boxes his ear. Not the one that has the hearing aid attached to it, fortunately—but he might _need_ another hearing aid, now, with the way his ear starts ringing.

His brain whites out and he moves on instinct. Swinging around, Steve catches Bucky in an armlock and swings downward—then stops short, staring at his hands. He’s gripping Bucky tight, one hand on his wrist and the other braced above his elbow. It’s a perfect lock, designed to bring his opponent low to the ground and keep them from being able to get any momentum for a counter-strike.

Steve lifts his head and Bucky is right there, watching him. A grin spreads over his face, sweet and delighted, before he spins around to sweep a leg at Steve’s knees.

Steve jumps and kicks him in the chest in midair. It’s hard to catch himself on the landing and keep his feet, but he does it, and backs up automatically.

Bucky is still grinning. He steps backward, arms still up but his posture is relaxed. Waiting.

Steve’s hands are already in fists, the forward one tilted so that his elbow covers his ribs, the back one cocked and coiled to throw a punch. He does it, and his hips rotate to follow the motion automatically. It’s not as fast or as powerful, obviously, but it’s _easy_. His body knows exactly what to do.

Bucky blocks and they trade arm holds again. It’s real obvious that Bucky is moving slower now, giving time to let Steve pay attention to his own body, but when Steve picks up the pace so does he. They move less, as Steve stops retreating from him and instead focuses on using the strength and size of Bucky’s body against him, engaging at close quarters to redirect punches into leverage. At this size Steve doesn’t last long on the ground, but there’s less of him to grab and if he’s quick enough he can slip out of most holds like an eel. The first time he does Bucky barks a startled laugh and despite everything Steve finds himself grinning back.

It's all still there: his body might be different but it’s still his own. He’s spent the last ten years fighting (or seventy, depending on how you counted these things), and his muscles remember how to move. This is a different kind of fighting, but it wasn’t as though he walked out of Erskine’s machine knowing how to use this souped-up new body.

It was Bucky who had taught him how, same as he’s doing today. That much hasn’t changed an inch.

 Eventually the asthma that’s been threatening Steve’s lungs all morning closes in for the kill and they call it quits. Bucky presses an inhaler into Steve’s hand. The hit of vaporized drugs is dizzying in its suddenness, opening up closed pathways so fast that Steve stumbles, pressing a hand against his chest as if it might explode.

Bucky’s hand lands on his back, a mirror to his own. Once Steve waves an all-clear, the gentle touch turns into a friendly clap that rattles Steve’s teeth. “We need to get Natasha down here, have her show you some moves.”

Steve shoots him a skeptical glance. “You wanna turn me into a Black Widow?”

“Only if you wear the catsuit.” Bucky dodges away from Steve’s punch, cackling.

By now it’s early afternoon and they head up to the rooftop garden. It’s early in the season yet and cold as hell but the daffodils are up, a bright yellow shock against the ugly gray of the building, and there are cherry buds in the trees that Steve is keeping an eye on. The second they blossom he wants to paint a whole series on them.

Then he realizes that he can _see_ the daffodils and the cherry buds in their full beauty and stops short, blinking. “What?” Bucky asks, hovering at his elbow.

After a moment Steve says, “Nothing. Uh, Friday? Did…are these lenses…how am I seeing color right now?”

“Mr. Stark developed the lenses of both your glasses and your contacts to correct the level of colorblindness listed in your medical records. Are they suitable?”

“I—yeah, they’re great.” He didn’t even _notice_. He’d forgotten all about it, and ain’t that a helluva thing? He remembers stepping out of Howard’s machine the first time: between the absence of shortened breaths and constant pain twisting his hips and spine, he’d already felt like maybe this was death, but then he’d seen the bright red of Peggy’s lipstick for the first time and thought maybe this was something else. Like that moment in the movies, when Dorothy opens the door and sees Oz outside, almost blinding in its Technicolor intensity. “Thanks—can you thank Tony for me?”

“I will pass along your message, sir.”

They settle at one of the picnic tables of the rooftop garden. There’s a cold breeze, but the shade umbrella of every table doubles as a warmer, and it kicks on automatically as Bucky nudges a chair over to Steve then pulls two out for himself. It doesn’t escape Steve’s notice that Bucky puts a chair for him squarely underneath the heater, where he’ll be protected from chill; but he makes no protest. Pneumonia _sucks_.

“Was Howard like that?” he asks, settling in one chair and putting his feet up on the other. “I don’t remember him too well.”

“You only met him twice, I think, and no, not really. He was just as brilliant as Tony but he didn’t pay much attention to other people.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “I remember him paying plenty of attention to _you_.”

“Well, sure, but I was his _project_.”

That gets an aggrieved scowl, as any mentions of Project Rebirth usually do. For months after Azzano Bucky had registered his belated objections to Steve ‘turning yourself into a goddamned lab monkey after I took my eyes off you for _five freaking minutes_.’

“Well, I’m not gonna object to Tony spending money on you. Keeps him from building anymore crazy murderbots. How’s your chest feeling?”

“Fine.” Steve’s back chooses this moment to twinge, and he winces, shifting in his seat. That sensation, he remembers all too well. “Bucky, look—it’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do—”

Bucky widens his eyes, the picture of innocence. “What’m I trying to do?”

“—but even if I _can_ still fight, it’s not going to be the same. Maybe I can be on the team, but unless we figure out how to reverse the magic, I can’t be Captain America anymore.”

“So?”

“ _So_ , he matters. Lots of people look up to Cap, you know that. They just got him back a few years ago, I don’t want to take him away again.”

“So don’t. Let someone up put on the stars and stripes. No,” he adds quickly before Steve can even open his mouth. “No way in hell. Get Sam or Clint to do it, I am _not_ putting on that outfit.”

“It’s not _that_ bad.”

Bucky laughs. “Buddy. Pal. You know I love you. But you have the _most_ ridiculous outfit, minus whatever weird popped-collar cape thing that Strange guy goes around in.”

Steve catches himself staring and quickly looks away. He can’t remember the last time Bucky laughed this much…definitely not after HYDRA, probably not even during the war. “Sam, then.”

“He’ll be good at it,” Bucky says with a nod. “You can be Slenderman. Wait, that’s an Internet thing already, isn’t it? How about, uh, _oh_ , you can swap for Sam’s wings! You’re lighter than he is, now, and if you’re flying you don’t have to have a lot of hitting power, anyway.”

“That’s…not a bad idea. But if you think Sam’s giving up his wings, you’re insane.”

Bucky laughs again, sprawling out in the sun. “So you both can be fliers. Hell, that’ll just leave Clint, Natasha, and I on the ground. I call dibs on hitching a ride with you. Thor always wants to ask about the war—he’s nice enough, just can’t take a hint, y’know?”

Sitting forward and swallowing a mouthful of water, Steve reaches out. His fingers curl over the edge of Bucky’s wrist and tap twice. It’s their signal: _Are you okay? What’s going on? Do you need help? I’m here._ All of that and more.

Bucky stills, looking out over the skyline. After a moment Steve settles in to wait, still sipping the water.

“Is it—I know it’s weird,” Bucky says eventually. He looks at Steve out of the corner of his eye.

“Weird isn’t bad.” That’s become their mantra over the past few years, on the advice of Bucky’s therapist. _One_ of Bucky’s therapists. “I just wanted to make sure.”

Bucky tilts his head back and squints against the sun. His hair has started to fall out of the bun and wisps of it blow across his face in the wind. A funny jolt hits Steve’s stomach, almost like nausea. It’s sexual attraction, he thinks, or about as close as he ever gets; from what Natasha’s described, it’s still not what other people feel, and Steve’s only ever experienced it with two people.

Steve will never, ever say it aloud—he feels like the lowest scum for even thinking it—but a secret part of him is grateful that Bucky now seems to share his lack of interest in sex. Their relationship is a lot easier to navigate, and Steve doesn’t have to panic whenever he gets those rare jolts, wondering what to do about it, if he should let Bucky know so they can take advantage of this opportunity. He can just sit there and think, _Gosh he’s handsome_.

“It isn’t bad,” Bucky agrees. “I saw you lookin’ like this and…my brain did its thing. Went sideways, or backwards, I guess.”

 _You look like you’re eighteen_ , he’d said. Which—what, makes Bucky nineteen right now? Steve can see it: Bucky’s a couple inches taller and a couple _feet_ wider and moves like a brick wall, carefully contained even in his smallest gestures; but since Steve got changed he’s had a loose-limbed grace, like all he needs is a hat set at a jaunty angle and he’d start whistlin’ show tunes. In his mind Steve can still see _that_ Bucky, leaning against the lamppost outside of Steve’s mom’s house, waiting to take him to the movies or the park or just to walk with him to work. Not carefree by any stretch; they’d both had plenty of hard times by then, but untouched yet by the war, or Zola, or his own guilt.

If something can let Bucky be that person again, even for a little while, Steve’s not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Awright,” he says, hopping down from the table. “If you’re jake then I am, too. Let’s go see Tony, I wanna see if I can talk him into building me some armor.”

There’s a second where Bucky looks at him uncertainly and Steve worries that he’s ruined it by asking—but then he can _see_ the shift happen. Bucky grins and it’s 1938, and they’ve got the world spread out around them like a skyline reaching the horizon.

Hopping up, Bucky drags Steve over to him, shaking him roughly by the shoulders as he steers them towards the door. “C’mon, Dorothy. Let’s go see what the wizard says.”

 

 


End file.
